Five times Rodney was silent
by healingmirth
Summary: Like the title says. Written for sg1 5 things on livejournal


1.

Following their spectacular lack of regard for his protocols and the import of a previously uncatalogued species of citrus, Rodney refused to acknowledge the botanists for several days. Any of them foolish enough to waste their time trying to present a proposal for approval were pointedly ignored until their words trailed off and they wandered away. If anyone, other than the botanists, had asked, Rodney would have explained that giving someone (or a nation, or a planet) the silent treatment is the best punishment that a genius has.

Although he was capable of nourishing silent scorn for months, if not years, it didn't last very long. As stupid as they are, people need to be constantly reminded of the heights of genius in order to be properly appreciative of its disappearance.

**

2.

Rodney made a point of visiting Carson every week. He stopped by the stasis chamber all the time, checking on the already highly redundant systems, but that was hit and miss, given missions and crises and all. He made a special trip once a week just to hang out. Rodney had talked, the first few visits, like people talk to graves or relatives in comas, but they'd revived people from stasis before, and he knew there was no way Carson could hear him. One day it had suddenly seemed wrong that he was talking and Carson couldn't; that he was using his frozen friend as a sounding board, and it seemed to Rodney that the respectful thing would be to just sit there, taking a chunk of his highly valuable time and accomplishing absolutely nothing.

Later, it occurred to Rodney that Carson would be pleased to know that even in stasis, he'd been a help to his friends, so Rodney would talk through things from time to time, but he had come to value the silence, too.

**

3.

It was only a matter of time before one of the Intergalactic Space Heroes came home from a slog through endless marsh with a case of the sniffles, and it was everyone's bad luck that it turned out to be the member of the expedition most capable of amplifying his pain and suffering. Once the cold-or-whatever-it-was settled in for the long haul of coughing and post-nasal drip, Rodney's frantic assertions that the health of his full-volumed voice was vitally important to the continued survival of the city did nothing but hasten its disappearance. Eventually, the Greatest Mind of His Generation was reduced to furious hissing whispers and briefings punctuated by pictionary and charades for the better part of a week.

**

4.

Once again proving that their team was lead by an adolescent boy, Rodney found himself tricked into a Silent Contest with Ronon during a painfully boring flight back to the 'gate. It started with Rodney ceding that Ronon was better at running, fighting, and other feats of ignorant brute force, but that Rodney was better at absolutely everything else. He was insistent in response to Sheppard's, "Absolutely everything?" and should have seen a trap coming, but Rodney was confident, and had also unfortunately forgotten that Ronon's other great talent was not talking. Rodney was outraged when Ronon simply went to sleep, but all of his indignant snapping and pointing merely elicited a snort from Sheppard, and, "the only rule is you can't talk."

When his steely glare failed to either wake Ronon up or force him to talk in his sleep, Rodney gave up and settled in for a nap himself, and Teyla and John enjoyed their first peaceful trip home in years.

**

5.

Rodney spent most of his life not talking about things for one reason or another. The kids in school wouldn't have understood him, and later, there were so many things about physics, wormholes, the 'gate, Atlantis, aliens that he wasn't allowed to talk about, he just got used to filling dead air with noise about food and blondes.

He realized somewhere along the way in Atlantis that not only could he talk to the people there about anything in his brain, but that he liked talking to many of them about the little things, like he imagined most of them had talked to friends and family their whole lives. He didn't say anything about that, though, about how much he valued their friendship. None of them did, but he thought they knew. Maybe when they got Teyla back home, he'd tell them.


End file.
